I have noticed that the engine sounds much louder when it comes on and seems to rev a little more than it used to as your speed increases, can only assume its to increase the amount of charge as the load increases on the batteries?

55jwb wrote:I have noticed that the engine sounds much louder when it comes on and seems to rev a little more than it used to as your speed increases, can only assume its to increase the amount of charge as the load increases on the batteries?

I do not have the latest November update and I noticed this behavior once when the range extender motor ran. I've only had to use the range extender around a handful of times but once it sounded much louder than the other time. From the decibels and frequency of the motor it sounded like it was running at a much higher RPM.

I'm assuming there are many factors that will change the charging level of this motor. Or does it have a maintenance cycle that runs this motor at higher RPMs at set intervals?

I'd be curious if you notice this every time for your car or if it just happened to be louder when it ran once after the update.

The November upgrade has totally resolved the off-peak charging issues and increased range of my REx by about 10% (and that's in winter). I also noticed the AirCon feature, where it doesn't automatically comes on.

I haven't experienced any of the crashes other people on here talk about (fingers crossed).

On Wednesday, we drove ~47 miles to the far northwest tip of our island. Even though the sun was at our back, ACC shut down more in one day than it has in total since we bought our car in November, 2014. ACC also failed to recognize a large white box truck in front and was accelerating toward the back of it until I intervened by pressing the brake pedal. The ACC icon did not show a vehicle in front, so it definitely was clueless about this truck. This had never happened previously. Such software glitches make me wonder how well autonomous driving will work. As a retired software engineer, I know the difficulty in eliminating all software bugs.

However, on the return trip in mid afternoon, ACC didn't shut down once. If anything, the windshield was likely a bit dirtier with a salt layer having parked near the ocean for several hours. Weird! But the November update did dial back the regen immediately when the ACC shuts down making this experience a much less jarring event which is nice.

When we departed on our return trip, I noticed that the nav screen was displaying the screen that it displays when the car is shut down. No iDrive button press would change this screen. It was like iDrive was hung at the car shutoff screen. I wanted to use the nav, so I had to pull over, shut down the car, and start it back up so that the nav screen displayed the usual startup screens. This has never happened before the November update which might or might not be responsible.

I have noticed an increased range of about 15% post-November update ! I am thrilled with it ! That 15% figure is not based on range calculations/estimates, but on actual miles driven. Temperature was about the same pre and post November update.. I'm not sure what the existing software version was in my car before the November 2015 update, and whether it was the original that came with the car when I purchased it in mid 2014, but needless to say I'm a very happy man.

The only difference I noticed is that in every trip my recuperation score is more than doubled! I always got 1 to 2 kWh/100km now I get 5kWh/100km!! True or bug? I also notice that the car slows down much less when I leave the acceleration pedal than before. But that might come from bad service (I got the software update during a service session because of a breaking-system failure).